Fly fishing diva

By Paul Boring Western News Reporter

In the last two decades, Libby resident Lisa Bardole has watched fly fishing permeate every facet of her life.

Bardole, a fly fishing guide, instructor, and equipment wholesaler and retailer, and her husband, Jon, came to the sport out of necessity.

After starting Bardole U.S.A., a manufacturing and wholesale business for fly fishing gear, the couple found themselves doing business with a completely foreign subculture.

³Fly fishing has a lingo all unto itself,² Lisa said. ³If you don¹t do it, you hear people talking about it and you haven¹t a clue what they¹re talking about. We¹d go into fly shops to deliver our products and pretend like we knew what they were talking about. I thought if we were going to be in this business, we better learn how to do it.²

Although Jon had fly fished when he was younger, Lisa was unfamiliar with the mechanics of the sport. Once a rod was placed in her hand, everything changed.

³She was a natural from the start,² Jon said. ³I put a fly rod in her hand and showed her once and it was like she had always done it.²

Now with roughly 30 products in their wholesale catalogue, Bardole U.S.A. can be found in fly shops all over the country. The venture, however, came from humble beginnings.

³We took the last $40 in our checking account to make up some prototypes,² Lisa said. ³That¹s how Bardole U.S.A. got started. And that¹s kind of been our bread and butter.²

³I wouldn¹t recommend doing it the way we did,² Jon said.

While the couple built up their wholesale business, Lisa developed a taste for teaching. She began teaching family, and then graduated to friends, and then friends of friends. Bardole found that she possessed a natural gift for relating to people and allowing each person to develop his or her unique fly fishing style and pace. Bardole can be found guiding on the Kootenai River, but teaching continues to be her passion.

³My love is teaching beginners,² she said. ³That¹s where my heart is. I have a very unconventional teaching style. I break all the rules. The number one thing is to get people laughing and then kind of sneak up on it. A lot of them have read in magazines that you have to do it this way or that way. I just let people go with their own style and it works.²

Bardole¹s students often comment that she manages to bring the stress level down to zero when instructing.

Lisa currently teaches several courses at Lincoln County Campus, including beginning fly fishing, rod building and fly tying. She also teaches Elderhostel classes. A series of instructional videos featuring Bardole are in production and she will make several appearances on a new fly fishing television series, with some portions to be filmed in Libby. A beginner¹s fly fishing book penned by the local angler will be available in the near future.

Spare time is a precious commodity for Lisa, who gives presentations and clinics all over the country, and has received invitations to travel as far away as Spain, England, and the Netherlands. When addressing fly-fishing clubs or sporting goods stores, Bardole always brings photo slides of northwestern Montana.

³I use Bud Journey¹s slides and they¹re amazing,² she said. ³My slideshows are different because I promote the whole area. I promote Libby. It¹s not just pictures of big fish. A lot of times afterwards, somebody will come up to me and say, ŒI don¹t want to go fish in Montana, I want to go live there.¹²

³Lisa is really a great ambassador for Libby,² Jon said.

Many of the attendees at Bardole¹s clinics are women. Lisa has molded her teaching style to accommodate women who might feel insecure about picking up the sport.

³A lot of women have been previously traumatized by a spouse when it comes to fly fishing,² she said. ³It¹s not about what you know as a teacher or what you can do or how far you can cast. It¹s about the person learning. I love teaching women. We have so much fun.²

Bardole was approached by the Montana Fish, Wildlife & Parks to teach fly fishing for the Becoming an Outdoors Woman program. She taught the first classes this year and agreed to continue teaching for the program.

With their final $40 paying handsome returns, the Bardoles broke into another corner of the fly fishing market.

³We shifted gears and started A Lady¹s Angle,² Lisa said. ³It¹s an offshoot of Bardole U.S.A. A Lady¹s Angle is so many different things. My whole life revolves around fly fishing one way or another, so it wasn¹t anything that I planned. It just happened.²

A Lady¹s Angle features rods, clothing, and accessories for both men and women, but the latter gender is the primary demographic group for which Bardole hopes to cater.

³I get teased a lot because I¹m into pinks and purples,² she said, holding her transparent candy grape fly rod with pink and purple wraps. ³I¹m not one of those Orvis poster children with the khakis and all that stuff. It¹s hard to find equipment for women in this business. That¹s what we¹re doing with A Lady¹s Angle.²

Jon has perfected rod making, fashioning a superior fly fishing rod that is second only to bamboo.

³Jon¹s amazing,² Lisa said. ³This action is the closest you can get to bamboo or Œcane¹ action, but in graphite form. And cane action is the ultimate. Our rods have a really soft, full action. They¹re very powerful.²

Bardole rods will be available through both businesses, with A Lady¹s Angle offering equipment sporting a more feminine touch.

³All of our rods have sparkles when you see them in the light, but the Lady¹s Angle rods will have even more,² Lisa said.

Lisa is the first woman to ever earn a spot on the Hyde Drift Boat tournament casting team and she will begin competing in fly fishing tournaments next year. She will also be a member of the Hyde-sponsored all women¹s casting team.

³Lisa can push over 120 feet with a four-weight, and her accuracy is just incredible,² Jon said. ³Not many men can do that.²

LaMoyne Hyde, owner of Hyde Drift Boats, coerced Lisa into joining his casting team by building her a custom-made, purple drift boat, the only one of its kind.

³That was a bribe to get her on the team,² Jon said. ³He asked me what he had to do to get her on board. That was it. Hyde¹s 100 percent behind her.²

Bardole remains modest about her success. She maintains that the best angler around is the person wearing the biggest smile.

Over the years, Lisa has accumulated many one-of-a-kind items. With the exception of a trout tattoo on her ankle, a majority of Bardole¹s collection is painted purple. Her collection began with a purple custom-made Bill Ballan reel, hand crafted by Ballan himself. From there, the collection expanded. Lisa is one of very few anglers who have a Dave Norling cane rod in their collection.

³He¹s a cane rod maker out of Minnesota, probably around 75 years old, and he started making rods back in the 1940s, with a goal of building 100 of them,² she said. ³Mine is number 78. He donated one of his poles to Trout Unlimited for a fundraiser and it went for $10,000.²

On a trip out to Libby, Lisa challenged Norling to test a Bardole rod, for which there is currently a two-year waiting list. Accustomed to the ultimate fly fishing rod, Norling was understandably skeptical.

³I told him our fly rods are the closest action to bamboo,² she said. ³He laughed and then tried it. He reluctantly admitted it and now has one of his own being built in the Bardole rod shop here in Libby.²

In a sport and business saturated with testosterone, Lisa has unapologetically burst onto the scene, walking the proverbial walk. Fly fishing has been good to the Bardoles.

³We¹re having a great time with this,² she said. ³We¹re so very blessed.²

The website for A Lady¹s Angle may be accessed at www.aladysangle.com and Bardole may be contacted at 293-5413.